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For Greg Dening, history saturates every moment of our cultural and
personal existence. Throughout this text the author shows his
awareness that the actual past remains fundamentally irreplicable.
He asserts all histories to be culturally crafted artifacts,
commensurate with folk tales, stage plays, or films. Whether
derived from logbooks and letters, or displayed on music hall
stages and Hollywood back lots, history is in essence our making
sense of what has and continues to happen, creating for us a sense
of our cultural and individual selves.
Captain Bligh and the mutiny on the Bounty have become proverbial in their capacity to evoke the extravagant and violent abuse of power. But William Bligh was one of the least violent disciplinarians in the British navy. It is this paradox that inspired Greg Dening to ask why the mutiny took place. His book explores the theatrical nature of what was enacted in the power-play on deck, on the beaches of Tahiti and in the murderous settlement at Pitcairn, on the altar stones and temples of sacrifice, and on the catheads from which men were hanged. Part of the key lies in the curious puzzle of Mr Bligh's bad language.
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